Board Game Review - Puzzle Strike 3rd Edition

Oh my holy crap. I have been playing this game wrong since I got it two years ago. It worked so well that I just assumed that's what was intended, and now I feel kind of stupid because I finally read the rule correctly and thought it was a rule change. The rules haven't changed for counter-crashing, I just played wrong for two freaking years.So now I feel bad. Sort of. See, the way we played it worked so well that we could knock out four games in...

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Movie Review - The Avengers

I hate going to the movies, because no matter how crowded or empty the theater, there's always some inconsiderate douche nozzle who feels absolutely compelled to hold lengthy conversations while the rest of us are trying to watch the film. So as much as I wanted to see The Avengers in the theater, I didn't get around to it until last night. Holy CRAP that movie is awesome. If it weren't for Christopher Nolan's recent Batman reinventions, The Avengers would easily be the best superhero movie of all time. It was fast and exciting and hilarious and...

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iPad Game Review - Avernum: Escape From The Pit

I got an iPad for my birthday. Or, more accurately, I bought myself an iPad for my birthday, and got one for my dad so we could play games even though he lives halfway across the country from me. And while I have really enjoyed many of the games we've been playing, I'm not writing tonight to tell you about any of them. I want to tell you about Avernum: Escape from the Pit, which is simply spectacular, but decidedly single-player.If you've been around...

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Board Game Revisit - Risk Legacy

My new plan of playing the games I actually enjoy even though I have a huge stack of review copies sitting in the corner of the room and calling in silent, hissing voices, 'play us!' is working out pretty well. Today, instead of playing one of the dozen games I've got lurking in the corners of my office like monstrous toddlers with sharpened teeth, I played two games of Risk Legacy. I may not have reduced the pile any, but DAMN! did I have a good time.The first time I reviewed Risk Legacy was about a year ago, before it came out. I played 13 games...

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Board Game Review - Merchants & Marauders

I started writing my review of Merchants & Marauders last night, and realized that I would have to be a much better writer than I actually am if I wanted to make this game sound like it was as fun as I found it to be. So I scrapped it and started over, though I'm not sure why I bothered, having already thrown in the towel and decided the task was beyond my level of expertise.The problem is that when I start telling you about the game, you're...

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TV Show Review - Copper

I mostly hate cop shows. It's not that there's not a ton of potential for a police show to be awesome, but more often than not, they turn into a lame procedural thing where the cops solve a different case every week. It turns into a formula where a body turns up (for some reason, there are no cop shows about cops who investigate shoplifting), then the police start hunting up leads, then there's some sterling detective work and the bad guy is apprehended....

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Lego Review - Monster Fighters

You could cut the anticipation in here with a knife. Everyone wants to know what this new direction of nerd reviews will look like. You're all waiting with baited breath. (Quick aside -  what the hell does 'baited breath' mean? Do you have really bad halitosis, and your exhalations smell like worms? And did I even spell 'baited' correctly? Should it be 'bated'?  I hope not, because that sounds uncomfortably like it could be the past-tense...

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Mixing It Up

I've come to an important realization, and I wanted to share it:I am bored with board games.That's not entirely true, actually. I am bored with NEW games. I don't want to try every newfangled game that gets published by some fifteen-year-old with a Kickstarter account and a copy of Microsoft Word. I don't want to read convoluted 36-page rule books that would give migraines to normal men. I don't want to have to learn every game I've got every time I want to play. I just want to play the games I already have and enjoy them.The problem, of course,...

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Event Review - Swimming Pool

Buying a swimming pool is like getting a part-time job, except that you have to pay to be there.My wife and daughter have been pestering me to buy an above-ground pool for our back yard since the beginning of summer. Admittedly, it was a hot summer (though last summer was WAY worse), but I resisted. I know having a pool is a lot of work. I know it's hard to keep it from getting murky. I know it drains money like having a hole in your pocket. So all summer, I avoided buying a pool.And then, the weekend before Labor Day, we found a huge pool at an...

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Board Game Review - Mage Knight

I hate feeling unprepared to review a game. It doesn't happen very often, because usually if I am not ready to write a review, I just go back and play it again. But in the case of the Mage Knight board game, I've already put five hours into it, and I'm not really of a mind to sink another afternoon into making sure I understand what I'm writing about. So fair warning, some of this will almost certainly be wrong, but since I expect my experience will...

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Board Game Review - Mice & Mystics

You know that scene from The Jerk, where Steve Martin is all excited because the new phone book has arrived at the gas station, and he goes, 'The new phone book is here! The new phone book is here!' Remember how he's so far over the top that he is running around with his hands in the air? Well, that was me when Mice & Mystics finally showed up at my house. My copy is a demo that was used at GenCon, and let's just say that it has been lovingly...

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Board Game Review - Starship Merchants

When you see a game called Starship Merchants in today's market, you are most likely to believe that this is one of those games where you build ships and explore planets and conquer enemies and have political battles in the senate where Jar-Jar Binks is responsible for the fall of the Republic because, unbelievably, somebody took the goofiest dingbat in the entire Star Wars universe and said, 'man, you know what this comic-relief halfwit would do...

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